Monday, July 13, 2015

Harvest Monday - July 13, 2015

There were a few exciting harvests this week, two of which I’m particularly happy about. It was actually a bit difficult to decide which of them was to get first billing, but I figured that this honour would go to the prettiest harvest – chamomile:

1st Chamomile Harvest

The little patch of chamomile that I planted at the end of one of the asparagus beds is going crazy with blooms:

Chamomile Patch

Can you believe that this is only 10 little plants that looked like this 6 weeks ago?

Chamomile Seedlings at the end of May

I picked all of these flowers a couple of days ago and the patch is ready for another picking today – I hope this means I’ll have lots of wonderful tea this coming winter.

Bursting with Blooms

I don’t have a dehydrator (yet) so I’m air drying them; fingers crossed this works out.

I’m growing two different varieties this year – a shorter, early variety (Extra Precoce Violetto) and a tall variety that is just starting to set pods (Ianto’s). At this stage, the tall variety looks like it will out-produce the shorter one.

Shelled Favas

We had a couple of small pickings of favas like this. Although not enough for a meal for 4, they were a wonderful snack for the fava lovers in my family - me and my son. They were so tender that we didn’t even have to peel the inner skin – delicious!

The next first this week (told you there were a lot!) were cucumbers. These were the first two specimens that came from the still small plants (they are not even 12" tall yet!).

Corentine (left); Garden Sweet (right)

The Garden Sweet is a repeat from last year & the Corentine, a European gerkin, is new. Both cucumbers, however, don't look like they should. Corentine is supposed to be a bit longer & thinner and Garden Sweet is also supposed to be longer, with a relatively even diameter along its length. I’m thinking that they were not adequately pollinated. I haven’t looked it up, but I’m fairly sure this also happened last year when the plants were still small & didn’t have that many flowers on them yet.

The shallots were looking a bit worse for wear – all of the stems had flopped over & I was actually concerned that they had some sort of issue. But when we harvested them, they looked really good.

Golden Shallots

I also harvested all of the potato onions, another one of my experiments. Almost all of the bulbs were bolting, with only a few exceptions.

Even though bolted onions are not supposed to keep well, I’m still going to try to cure them as potato onions are supposed to be really good keepers, so you never know. I’ll do a post about the onion/garlic/shallot beds soon with more details.

Potato Onions on Curing Rack

I actually don’t need any fresh onions yet – can you believe I have a few from last year that are still firm? The shallots & potato onions are not included in today’s tally as I add them only after they are cured & trimmed.

And now for the repeat harvests. The last of the Sabre shelling peas were picked:

Sabre Shelling Peas

The sugar snaps are coming on fast & furious:

Sugar Snaps

I harvested over 4 lbs. of them this past week - and when you consider that is from a 4' x 2' spot, that's quite something!

There were a couple of small Aspabroc side shoots:

Aspabroc

The direct seeded spinach was bolting, so I harvested what I could and pulled the plants. Still haven’t decided what I’ll be replacing it with.

Last of the spinach &
a handful of sugar snaps

I only grew four kohlrabi this spring and one of them was a real slowpoke. It finally sized up this past week, so that one was picked together with a bunch of mizuna.

Mizuna & White Vienna Kohlrabi

And finally, I harvested 3 heads of tatsoi:

Tatsoi

Also harvested this week but not photographed were the last of the strawberries. We had a couple of bowlfuls earlier in the week but now there are so few left that we are basically eating them in the garden if we happen to spot a ripe one. I think the bed will be totally done this week.

Thanks Sue! If your shallot stems have flopped over and are dying back, I would say that it's harvest time.

This was a very strange shallot year for the Golden Shallots. Usually they divide into 4 or 5 shallots but this year, practically all of them divided into 2 with a couple of 3's and even several that didn't divide at all. On the plus side, the bulbs themselves are really big and looked nice & firm. I'm thinking they may not have gotten enough sun, but am not entirely sure. Ah the garden, a land of non-stop mysteries!

What a nice variety you have coming in! Those cucumbers definitely look funny. I have some chamomile that I've never thought to dry and use for teas - - I just thought they were pretty. I should try that out.

Chamomile is very soothing & calming...with the baby's arrival just around the corner, it would be a wonderful herb to have on hand as it's not only the baby that will need soothing and calming (although not with tea, of course!), but I bet you will as well ;)

Why don't I grow chamomile? How silly. Thanks for the encouragement to grow it next year. And your tatsoi and mizuna are gorgeous! Were they covered? I didn't cover mine and they were very quickly decimated by bugs.

Now that I know how easy it is to grow, I'll definitely include a patch of chamomile in my garden each year, that's for sure! And yes, I do cover all of my brassica beds with netting otherwise the cabbage worms would end up eating more of it than we us!

Thanks Mac. Things are definitely speeding up now and it feels really good after the slow start to the season this year. I sowed most of the summer crops late this year, so I can't wait to see them too ;)

Really nice harvest. Hooray for fava beans. The pods look like they filled out nicely. And how do you have cucumbers before me? Mine are at least starting to vine and flower but it will be a week or two.

Well, that is a very good question - maybe I'm growing earlier varieties or they start to fruit before they are that big? My plants are tiny still, but they started to flower even before they started to vine, which they are now just starting to do. I'm actually quite surprised that I harvested anything from them.

And the open fava pod in the photo was actually one of the prime specimens. I had many that had only one or two beans per pod, so they just didn't make the cut ;)

Lovely harvests. I used to grow chamomile. I found that I got tired of picking after a while (they keep going), so I left them alone. They would go to seed and they would pop up the next year without any help. I haven't grown them for a couple of years now, but I still got a couple of chamomile plants that I had to pull - as now they are weeds.

Thanks! I'm not sure if tatsoi is a summer veg or not, but I still have 2 or 3 heads in the garden & only one has bolted so far. I have grown Joi Choi successfully over the entire summer, so I figure that other Chinese greens may also do ok - never know until you try!

Fabulous harvest! I am looking forward to hearing how your chamomile tea turns out. Do you have a favorite recipe? I've never made my own tea before. My onions also bolted but the bees like the blooms.

Thanks Karin! Chamomile tea couldn't be easier to make as it has only two ingredients - dried chamomile and hot water! I've never actually made it before with my own dried flowers, but what I have read is that you simply steep 1 tsp. of the flowers in 1 cup of hot water for a few minutes. I'll make sure to let you know how it turns out once my flowers have dried!

That's amazing you still had onions from last year! I love the looks and aroma of chamomile but I don't use it often or drink the tea. So I grow lemon grass, mint and lemon balm instead which I do use all the time.

Lemon balm is on my list of herbs to grow in the future as is lemongrass - I actually tried to grow lemongrass in a pot about 15 years ago but wasn't that successful. I think I've learned a thing or two since then, though ;)

Thanks Norma - potato onions are one of those old, veg that used to be grown throughout North America by most households until large scale farms took over. This was my first attempt at growing them but I started off with seed, which is itself problematic as the onions do not grow true from seed (they are normally grown like shallots where you plant a bulb and it multiplies), so you never know what you will get.

You did start with the prettiest harvest - Chamomile is just lovely and I hear the bees love it too. I am really excited to read your future onion/shallot/etc post. I have always been very curious about the "Stranger" onion family members like potato onions. I am excited to hear what you have to say. Have a great gardening week.

Yes - the pollinators love the chamomile & there are usually a few hovering around as I harvest the flowers. Always such a welcome sight, especially these days when bees are nowhere near as prolific as they used to be.

Fabulous favas! And so many other goodies too. I always air dried my chamomile spread out in a single layer on a basket tray and they came out fine, although it's not at all humid where I live. And I had the same experience as Daphne, one year I got tired of harvesting them and let them go to seed and now they pop up everywhere. They are a bit weedy in some spots but I still like to let some of them grow because they are so pretty and also attractive to good bugs.

Thanks Michelle! We have never eaten fresh favas before and they are such a treat. We haven't harvested very many so far so we're enjoying savouring them "au natural" after just a brief stint in some boiling water.

My mom suggested air drying them outside, but we do get very humid around here, so that was a definite concern. I decided to try drying them in the basement; it's the coolest part of the house, but the AC does draw the moisture out of the air so I'm hopeful that they will do ok.

The chamomile is flowering like crazy - I was worried that the small # of plants I had wouldn't produce very much, but now I have a feeling they will be more than enough - you definitely don't need a big patch! That spinach was direct sown in early summer to make up for some failures - I was surprised it lasted as long as it did although by the time I harvested it, it was bolting pretty badly.

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